The purpose of this blog is two-fold:
For parents of the children in our program, a chance to review, go deeper, or see what you missed at GIFT.
For other Faith Formation professionals, a chance to share thoughts and ideas.
Please feel free to leave comments!
-Dez

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Beatitudes Lesson and Fun Project

For our lesson on the Beatitudes this month, we started by having kids & parents brainstorm at their tables about the things they thought people sometimes think will make them happy.  Then, I had kids bring up posters that I had placed on the tables.  These were numbered on the back, so that all of the "I could be happy if..." posters came up first, followed by all of the corresponding Beatitudes.  I taped them up and discussed each one.  I taped the Beatitudes over top of the other posters.  Here is an example of 2 posters that went together:



You can download a pdf of all 16 posters by clicking here.


For our project, staying with our "Detectives" theme, we made what I called "Beaticlues" games.  This is basically just a baggie of rice with small hidden objects in it.  Each object corresponds to one of the Beatitudes, which are listed on the label.  I ordered some cool striped vinyl tape at Amazon to make it look more like a real evidence bag.  Also, this good, strong tape helps ensure that the rice will stay in the bag!  Kids can have fun playing "I Spy" with the objects by moving the rice around inside the baggie.  Most of my purchased objects came from Oriental Trading, although the tear-drop shaped beads were from JoAnn ETC.  The pennies and pebbles I just found at home.  Here's a finished project:


Here are some pics from how I set up the project assembly line:


After labeling the bags, the items went in.  Then the rice, scooping over the bowl to avoid spills.

Finally, we ended with a prayer I wrote based on the Beatitudes.

Click here to download the Beaticlues game labels.

Click here to download the prayer.